Refusal Aesthetics.
This is the current manifestation of previous work on refusal, denial, saying no.
What's the value? What is all this for?
Half my practice is in service of exploring potential and possibility: infinite spaces and enormous patterns. This practice comes from my beliefs in the potentials of life, in the potential and possibility of all people and things, in infinity, randomness and chance. I really nurture this belief in most of the things I do, its the larger practice and belief system of my life. I want to work in service of Yes.
That being said, there's another half of my work that wants to court the opposite, and dwell on the consideration that maybe there's no potential to be found, that possibility is rare, that nothing is possible.
Negative, right?
I was thinking, a couple of years ago, about how one of the worst things you can expect, or hear from another person is the word No.
Rejection, refusal, impossibility.
Saying no is a powerful thing. It's a declaration of your boundaries. It can protect you.
Saying no, accepting never, these are powerful stances in an age of Yes. An age of complacent and unthoughtful Yes, but an age of Yes nonetheless.
Part of the pleasure in this process is in defiance of the materials. Craft materials and techniques in service of No seems rather subversive and precise in a way that all the crummy affirmatives and prettifying Martha Stewart add-ons can't be.
There's an almost wicked pleasure, on one hand, to saying No, to beginning from a stance of refusal that I adore.
There's also the struggle that the process of these pieces helps me to work through, the struggle to accept things that can or will never be. Acceptance of being told No, ownership of the possibility that some things might not be possible.
Sometimes the answer is No.
Sometimes it's Never.
